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Background

After the failure of the 1910 FIFA World Cup, FIFA elected to go back to the group stage format that had been successful in the 1906 edition. The hosting duties would then go to England who was the founding nation of modern football. The competition would have 16 teams competing in the World Cup for the first time which they would be split into four groups of four, with the top two going through to the knockout stage.

Qualification

For the first time in history, qualification had to be used to determent who would qualify through to the World Cup as the 20 teams that joined FIFA tried to qualify through to the World Cup. The top 12 teams automatically went through to the World Cup while the bottom four teams had to enter playoffs for the renaming four spots. The four teams to qualify were Scotland, Norway, Chile and Italy. For Chile and Italy, this would be the debut World Cup tournament for those teams.